


Unspoken Requests (are sometimes loudest)

by apracticalghost



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: John Watson invaded Afghanistan but he can't admit he has a crush, M/M, Warnings for poetry, and fluff, lots of pining, the fluffiest fluff to ever fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 23:50:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apracticalghost/pseuds/apracticalghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wants a lot of things from Sherlock, but mostly he just stares. Inspired by a short poem that seemed written about everyone's favourite consulting detective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken Requests (are sometimes loudest)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havetardiswilltimetravel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havetardiswilltimetravel/gifts).



> I made myself squee while writing this. You've had fair warning.

_I want you to read me like lost lines of Shakespeare._

John would never admit that he wants those pale eyes trained on him with the same feverish intensity Sherlock only reserves for the dead or unusually clever. Sherlock drinks in a crime scene with the sort of reverence usually displayed by particularly devoted scholars, caresses overlooked evidence like a lover. That’s what gets John the first time he notices it. It’s surprisingly easy to imagine that gaze turning on him. Deducing his past, his fears. God, his desires. Softened by affection, but no less commanding. Yes, he can see it and he can damn well almost feel it.

There’s another part of him that is grateful to be so ordinary. Sherlock will never study him that way; his idle fantasies are safe in his own head.

……

 

_Pretend I am a long-forgotten tome / And lay your fingers all along my body searching for the meaning of each / Comma and syllable etched in my skin._

“You are the biggest idiot I have _ever_ had the misfortune of looking after!” John scolds as he presses at Sherlock’s side and the other man groans. Sherlock had brushed off Lestrade and persistent paramedics and made it all the way back to Baker street head held high before lowering himself to the sofa with a whimper.

“It’s not cracked, but just. God, you child. You could have punctured a fucking lung walking around like that.” But Sherlock ignores the barrage of insults and endures the careful examination of the almost perfect boot print blooming across his ribs and consequent bandages with what for him passes as good grace. All he says in his defence?

“You’re my doctor, John.”

That night John remembers the pale expanse of Sherlock’s back, the way muscle and bone slid under the skin with every breath. He wants to go back and count the notches of his spine, hold the base of his neck and watch his body arch in a sinuous curve down down down twisting with a quiet desperation. Then he wants to start at the top and count every stitch Sherlock’s ever had and the ones he should have, taste the chemical burns with his tongue and kiss the faded tracks until they cease to matter. He wants to read Sherlock’s story from his skin and he wants to own every word of it. At the same time he wants those long fingers studying him in turn – the scars and bruises, the violent punctuation, the places that make him beg.

John is absurdly grateful for his time spent in the army. He’s got being quiet down to a science.

……

 

_Puzzle the strange language in the whorls of my fingers / And the ellipses of my scars._

John spends a frankly shameful amount of time staring at Sherlock’s hands. It’s not his fault the man’s usually doing something interesting and/or important with them. He needs the details for his blog. He’s proud that most of the fantasizing is kept to his own free time.

Which is why it takes John by surprise when mid-deduction about the alleged gun-for-hire they’re supposed to be chasing, Sherlock snatches John’s hand and holds it inches from his face like he’s about to read his fortune.

“Interesting … hammer bite here of course…” he trails off, ghosting a line from the callus between thumb and forefinger and over John’s palm. John’s eyelids flicker dangerously as Sherlock continues his findings in a mumbled undertone. The soap John uses at the surgery, the first time his scalpel slipped, the time he yanked open the door of a burning humvee leaving a blister along his palm and erasing a few millimetres of fingerprint. He even catches the three times John has broken his fingers; once at a rugby match in his teens, again in basic through stupidity (mostly his own) and again overseas. That one was poorly set; he'd been in a hurry and never fancied re-breaking it. “And of course, your grip is quite strong. I expect much the same from him. Ex-military – of course! Come along John.”

The scrutiny leaves John tingling and breathless. He may be in more trouble than he anticipated.

……

 

_Know me as I too have known you / And revelled in the soft measure of your breath_

On this particular day, Sherlock took a dip in the Thames. By force. In January.

John shakes his head fondly when he finds Sherlock curled in a deep and peaceful sleep wrong way around on his bed. He finally stopped trembling, and his lips have lost their awful pallor. His breath is a steady rush and John could listen to it and all it represents for hours. Instead he allows himself to rest his hand in Sherlock’s hair for just a moment and pretends the mumbled nonsense Sherlock huffs out is his name.

Later he wonders if Sherlock would ever feel something like that; perfect, simple joy that another person is breathing. More specifically that John is breathing. He doubts it.

……

 

_I memorized the godless prayers in your hands_

Sherlock’s hands really are becoming a personal problem of John’s. More so now that even Sherlock has begun to comment on the gratuitous description in John’s blog, “Really John, you describe them with almost as much attention to detail as my eyes. Is that quite necessary?”

John wants to tell him that it is. That the shapes his fingers draw in the air burn in his memory like an afterglow. That the way his hands caress and coax sound from his violin is nothing short of mesmerizing and that when Sherlock’s hands fold in his humanist prayers, John can’t look away. Because he knows that Sherlock’s mind is doing something just a few deities shy of miraculous and it is an honour to witness.

……

 

_And I have seen the secret shades of your eyes / That on her greatest days, the sky has never made._

When John opens his eyes, it is to the sound of Sherlock verbally eviscerating the entire gathered assemblage of New Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police Force.

“If you had been here _exactly when_ I told you the suspect would be present, none of this would have happened. Now if you think one of you lot could manage the complicated process of calling an ambulance—”

John tries to sit up with a groan that sends Sherlock stumbling into his field of vision, “ _John._ ”

So simply said, but it rings in his ears and Sherlock isn’t looking away. John’s head aches, his back feels like it was hit with a truck (Actually a bat. Small mercies.) and he’s fairly sure that he’s going to be sick in the near future, but Sherlock is looking at him, mercurial eyes shifting as he watches and damn if they aren’t the most brilliant blue John’s ever seen.

“Leave them be, yeah? My own fault the bastard was too quick for me.”

And Sherlock’s hands flutter near John’s cheek like he wants to touch him, needs to see that he’s whole. Damn his restraint. “He’s bloody lucky I didn’t kill him,” Sherlock growls, low enough for only John to hear.

Maybe it’s the concussion he surely has, but John reaches up to cradle the stunned expression on Sherlock’s face. John likes it there, and when John corrects him, he gets to watch comprehension break over Sherlock’s face like a wave. “I’m lucky you didn’t kill him. They’d take you away and then where would I be?”

He doesn’t see the shock on the officers’ faces when Sherlock leans in to kiss him ... because the only one who didn’t see it coming was John.

……

 

_I can look at nothing less._

            As it turns out, John never really has to.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Based on a poem written for a lover. He was not as perceptive as Sherlock  
> A Request  
> I want you to read me like lost lines of Shakespeare.  
> Pretend I am a long-forgotten tome  
> And lay your fingers all along my body searching for the meaning of each  
> Comma and syllable etched in my skin.  
> Puzzle the strange language in the whorls of my fingers,  
> And the ellipses of my scars.
> 
> Know me as I too have known you  
> And revelled in the soft measure of your breath  
> I memorized the godless prayers in your hands  
> And I have seen the secret shades of your eyes  
> That on her greatest days, the sky has never made.  
> I can look at nothing less.
> 
>  
> 
> ***Please comment. I beg of you. My ego is hungry. But seriously, I also just like feedback, comments and criticism. Those feed the writing. Ta.***


End file.
